The Outrageous Belle Marchmain

by Lucy Ashford

  Belle was truly floundering now. ‘It must appear to you as theft, I know. But that was all a mistake.’

  ‘I suppose he told you that my sheep had strayed on to his lands,’ he drawled icily. ‘Told you that it was my fault, for not maintaining my fences.’

  The hot blush rose to Belle’s cheeks. That was exactly what Edward had said.

  ‘I maintain my fences very carefully, Mrs Marchmain,’ went on Davenant. ‘In fact, every detail of my life is conducted with the utmost rigour. Now, I’m a busy man...’ he glanced again at his watch ‘...it’s gone four, and I’m sincerely hoping you’ve come here with some concise suggestions as to how your younger brother intends to pay back the not inconsiderable sum he owes me for selling off my sheep. Which is a criminal act, incidentally.’

  * * *

  Adam Davenant usually kept his emotions on a tight rein, but by now he was deeply angry. Somehow this woman had got under his guard and he shouldn’t have let her. Turquoise and pink, for God’s sake—he had to blink every time he looked at her! He should have abided by his first instinct and ordered her off his premises.

  ‘Mr Davenant,’ she was saying, that pointed chin still tilted defiantly, ‘you must realise that it has been extremely difficult for my brother to see our heritage so diminished.’

  She wasn’t giving up yet, registered Adam. ‘Ah,’ he answered. ‘The precious notion of blue blood and entitlement. Spare me, Mrs Marchmain. The Hathersleigh estate has been lurching towards ruin for generations, thanks to a fatal mixture of greed, complacency and sheer carelessness. Have you observed the way in which your brother conducts his business? Have you seen the great piles of unsorted paperwork that litter his so-called study?’

  ‘He is busy,’ Belle faltered. ‘His wife is not well...’

  ‘And so he sends his older sister to make his excuses for him. I repeat, I bought that land at an excessive price from your brother—not out of generosity, nor out of greed, but because I simply had no desire to have a bankrupt neighbour in Somerset. It’s not good for appearances.’

  Belle gazed at him whitely. This man was surely as cold and hard as the rock his men hewed from the ground. She rose to her feet. ‘Exactly how much does my brother owe you for the sheep?’

  ‘I don’t see how you can hope to pay me off. You must have even less money to spare than he does.’

  ‘I run a successful dressmaking business!’

  ‘Not successful enough.’

  She sat down again. Adam watched the turquoise ribbons, ridiculously flippant, fluttering from her straw bonnet and reflected that her brother was a goddamned weakling. Adam had rashly hoped to help young

  Hathersleigh by buying that land, but the fellow was a fool, and a liar, too—he’d not even equipped his rather pluckier older sister with the truth.

  And the fact that she was still assuming her goddamned superiority, and laboured under the misapprehension that he, Adam, was somehow under obligation to show leniency, sent bitterness surging through

  Adam’s blood.

  He knew that people like her despised and feared men of Adam’s mould, who were a symbol of things to come, of old values passing. She thoroughly deserved humiliation at his hands. Yet even while she glared up at him as if he was the devil incarnate, he felt something simmer, damn it, that was very like lust in his traitorous loins. Felt the longing to take her very firmly in his arms and plunder that sweet, rose-pink mouth with his lips and tongue...

  Jarvis had clearly tried to make her his at some point in the past. Jarvis had failed.

  Adam could see her hands trembling now. Yet still she faced him with that damned defiance, still she came up with fresh excuses for her sibling.

  ‘My brother does not deserve prison, Mr Davenant.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Indeed. You see, he has a wife who is expecting their first baby very soon—’

  ‘He’ll have that in common with many of his fellow-prisoners in Newgate gaol, then.’

  She tightened her fists. Then: ‘You are despicable,’ she said quietly. Her voice was steady, yet he noted how her small, high breasts heaved with distress beneath that tightly buttoned little pink jacket. ‘Despicable,’ she repeated. ‘Both in your behaviour to me now, and your deliberately not telling me who you were that afternoon on Sawle Down. Your deception was truly dishonourable.’

  Dishonourable? Damn it! She’s a greedy little widow, angling for money. Adam went in with all guns blazing.

  ‘Your kind talk always of honour and status,’ he retorted harshly. ‘Would you say your brother was showing honour, in sending his sister to me to plead his cause? There are names for that kind of behaviour.’

  She recoiled as if he’d struck her. ‘It was my decision to come here! If you think that Edward intended—’

  ‘I think,’ he cut in, ‘that your cowardly brother told you about his plight in the hope that your feminine charms would soften my steely peasant heart. If that’s an example of blue-blooded behaviour, you can keep it. In my world, we call it pimping.’

  ‘Oh! I think—my brother did not mean—’ She was stammering now, and backing away; somehow her dangling sleeve caught the little steam model and it went crashing to the floor.

  She let out a cry of dismay and bent to start picking the pieces up.

  ‘Leave it,’ he commanded harshly. ‘A footman will see to it.’

  ‘No!’ She was still flurrying around the floor. ‘No, I will pick it all up and then I am going, you hateful, hateful man! Edward was right to say you are a boor and a tyrant. And—and I will see Edward and I in gaol together before I grovel any more to you!’

  With that she bobbed down again, to pick up more pieces of the ill-fated model. As she did so she was presenting that very pert, very rounded derrière to Adam’s narrowed eyes. Hell. He did try to look away. He despised himself for registering even the slightest flicker of interest. But a picture of her unclad appeared rather tantalisingly in his mind, and his body responded accordingly.

  * * *

  Adam had decided long ago that marriage was not for him. He had neither the time nor the inclination to play the games of courtship, flattery and lies that a permanent commitment would involve. God knew he was offered enough suitable brides; they were pushed before him at every opportunity, thanks to his wealth.

  But the example of his parents’ marriage had put him off for good. Miner Tom’s only son, Charles, had been so rich he was able to choose a bride from the aristocracy, but his well-born wife—pushed into the marriage by her parents—had thoroughly despised her low-born husband and after producing two male heirs she’d embarked on a string of affairs.

  Adam had spent a good deal of his childhood trying to protect his young brother, Freddy, from their mother’s promiscuity and their weak father’s rages. Both parents had died years ago, and Adam felt not the slightest desire to emulate their unhappiness; hence his custom of keeping suitable mistresses to satisfy his own male desires.

  He treated them generously, but always Adam made the terms quite clear: ‘This ends when I say it ends. Afterwards, if we happen across each other in society, we will acknowledge each other civilly. No more and no less.’

  Most of his former mistresses knew better than to cause him any trouble; Lady Farnsworth, his latest, had been an exception. Adam had quickly wearied of the elegant widow’s clinging possessiveness and her withering contempt for any suspected rivals.

  The trouble was, he hadn’t yet chosen himself another woman for his bed. Usually they were either widows or amicably separated from their husbands and the choice was plentiful. But no one had tempted him to make an offer, since...

  Since he collided with this little minx, who’d insulted his name to high heaven one March afternoon on Sawle Down.

  The realisation struck him like a thunderbolt. No. He couldn’t have held back from singling out a new chère amie because he was thinking of Belle Marchmain. It was damned impossible! But...

  She’d com
e here to ask him a very big favour, but her plans—so far—had come crashing round her pretty ears. Now he looked at her again as she furiously picked up the last bits of his model from the floor.

  Her straw bonnet had fallen off and her glossy raven curls were tumbling around the slender column of her neck. ‘There! That’s all of it!’ she breathed, putting two more pieces defiantly on the table. Her face had become a little flushed. ‘Whatever you call it,’ she added rather darkly, her hands on her hips.

  Mrs Belle Marchmain looked delectable. Her pink silk jacket had fallen apart, and the brightly patterned gown that fitted so snugly to her bosom and tiny waist almost made him smile.

  What would she be like in bed? If she was, as Jarvis suggested, well practised in the erotic arts and open to offers, it might be interesting to find out...

  ‘And—and you can stop looking at me like that!’

  Her rebuke shocked him out of his reverie and Adam stopped smiling. ‘You were asking about the model you almost destroyed,’ he said. ‘It’s a miniature of a Newcomen steam engine. And that’s not quite it, Mrs Marchmain. You came to me with a problem. And I think I might have the solution.’ He’d propped his lean hips against the sideboard and watched her with cool, assessing eyes.

  Belle suddenly felt that the room was too small. Either that or this formidable man was too close. Something tight was squeezing her lungs. ‘Let me tell you now that Edward will never sell more of the estate to you and I wouldn’t ask him to. It’s his heritage!’

  ‘But of course,’ answered Adam imperturbably. ‘And your brother shouldn’t be expected to dirty his hands for a living as so many men—and women—do.’ She swallowed. ‘I also imagine,’ he went on in the same calm voice, ‘that most of the rest of his estate is entailed. You want me to drop charges against your brother for stealing my livestock, don’t you? Well, I certainly require payment. And as to what that payment shall be, I have the perfect answer. I think you do as well.’

  What? Belle paled. ‘I—I thought perhaps we could come to some arrangement, for Edward to pay his debts off gradually...’

  His lip curled. ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. But I still see no reason, Mrs Marchmain, to dismiss the obvious solution.’

  So frozen did she look that her lips could clearly scarcely frame the words. ‘What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Davenant?’

  ‘Let’s be clear. You surely realise you have only one thing you can offer in payment of your brother’s debts,’ Adam said softly. ‘Yourself. Be my mistress.’

  Chapter Five

  Belle felt, in that instant, as if all the breath had been squeezed from her lungs. Lord Jarvis’s insults had made her feel sick. This man made her feel as if the safety of her world had been rocked to its foundations.

  Be my mistress.

  He was just watching her, leaning back against the sturdy oak sideboard with his arms folded across his broad chest. The candlelight fell on his cropped dark hair, on his sleepy grey eyes, on his hateful, sternly handsome face. And her pulse was skittering with the unsteadiness of a new-born colt.

  The way he was looking at her. Assessing her, damn him. She felt his presence in the pit of her stomach and her dry mouth. She couldn’t look at him without tingling anew at the sight of his powerful figure: those heavily muscled shoulders, his broad chest tapering down to slim hips and powerful thighs... Oh, just his being near her made the air difficult to breathe.

  His mistress. How dare this man make such a proposition? How dare he? Yet—oh, goodness, she’d been an arrogant idiot to come here. Straight into the lion’s den, armed only with her own stupid defiance—and her brother’s lies. She bent to rather shakily pick up her fallen bonnet; how ridiculous its gaudiness seemed now.

  She remembered how she’d felt when her husband died and the enormity of the debts she’d faced. Remembered how she’d stood her ground against Lord Jarvis—only, dear God, this man was far more dangerous than Jarvis.

  When she eventually spoke her words were, to her, miraculously steady. ‘To be perfectly honest, Mr Davenant,’ she replied, ‘I’m not quite sure whether your—offer is intended as a deliberate insult or a very poor joke.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s neither. There happens to be a vacancy.’

  ‘But I thought you already had a mistress...’ She clamped her mouth shut. You stupid fool, Belle.

  She shouldn’t have shown the slightest interest. Yet she couldn’t help but hear, in her shop, the gossip of the ton. Couldn’t help but know that Adam Davenant attracted the attentions of the most beautiful women in London.

  His dark eyebrows had already arched in amusement. ‘So you take an interest in my affaires, do you? Then you should be aware that my latest companion and I have recently parted company.’

  Belle returned his smile, sweetly. ‘She has had a lucky reprieve.’

  He laughed. He actually laughed. ‘I wish you’d tell her so.’ His voice was silky. ‘I thought I was making you quite a reasonable offer. I would provide you, of course, with a London house and an income, so I do wish you’d stop acting like some virgin schoolgirl, Mrs Marchmain.’

  She let out a sharp breath. ‘I’m merely, as a woman of the world, trying to assess what you would gain from such an arrangement. You’ll understand I find it hard to believe you are suggesting this out of any kind of—of liking.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m rather bored with women who think I’m the answer to all their prayers.’

  ‘So tedious for you, I’m sure!’

  He nodded. ‘A little, yes.’ Belle gritted her teeth. ‘I think,’ he went on blithely, ‘that you, on the other hand, would enter the kind of relationship I’m suggesting with a refreshing honesty. And of course your weakling brother’s error regarding the sheep would

  be forgiven—’ He stopped. He suddenly noticed that she was trembling. ‘Is something wrong, Mrs Marchmain?’

  ‘You thought I came here to—to bargain with you.’

  ‘And didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes! But not in that way.’

  He was silent a moment. Then he said steadily, ‘I see. Not now that you know exactly who I am, you mean. Tell me, does my low birth make me so much worse a prospect than Jarvis?’

  She shuddered. ‘Jarvis is despicable.’ She spoke with such absolute disgust that Adam felt a bolt of uncertainty shoot through him.

  ‘I was under the impression that you were holding out for considerably more money from him.’

  ‘Holding out for... Oh, you are a friend of his,’ she retorted bitterly, ‘so it wouldn’t matter what I said. But do you really think I would contemplate a proposal of any kind from Lord Jarvis?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Jarvis would offer a solution to your problems. He’s not as rich as I am, but he does have a title. And, oh, I believe his family goes back almost as far as yours, although there might not be a duke in the family...’

  Belle had stepped shakily away from him. ‘You are hateful,’ she whispered. ‘Mr Davenant, I will find some way to pay back the money my brother owes, I swear. But you’ll understand, I hope, if I tell you that I can

  no longer bear to spend another moment in your presence.’

  He shrugged. The taint of Miner Tom. Well—let her face the consequences of her and her brother’s damned arrogance.

  She was already making for the door when he saw something sparkling under her dark lashes. Tears.

  ‘Stop,’ he said.

  She turned. She was almost broken, he suddenly realised; he saw it in the paleness of her cheeks, the trembling of her fingers as she crammed her straw bonnet over her dark curls.

  Something dangerously like pity twisted at his throat.

  ‘Jarvis is not my friend,’ he said curtly. ‘He was here on a matter of business and, believe me, that was almost more than I could tolerate. What exactly happened between the two of you?’

  She lifted her eyes steadfastly to his. ‘Two years ago Lord Jarvis invited me to his house on the pretext of investing in my busine
ss. He made me an offer that I found...obscene. Though—’ Oh, what was the use? Belle was shivering. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You still think I’m in the market for... That I visited you to... Oh, I’ve been so stupid. I should never have come here.’

  Not now she knew who he was. Adam started

  towards the door. ‘Unlike Jarvis,’ he said, ‘I don’t—ever—force myself on unwilling females. You came here of your own accord and you’re equally free to leave.’

  She started towards the door, then stopped. ‘But—’

  ‘As for those sheep,’ he went on pitilessly, ‘I’ll get my secretary to send you a bill so you can pay me for them. You told me your shop was flourishing, didn’t you?’ He was holding the door open for her.

  Belle froze. Her shop—flourishing? Oh, Lord, this was bad. What could she do? He’d offered her a solution and she’d discarded it.

  Think again, Belle.

  She heaved in a great breath. ‘Mr Davenant,’ she said.

  Now, Adam wanted this woman and her insults out of here. But something was happening. Some new desperation in her voice riveted his attention. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Davenant—what if I were to consent to becoming your mistress after all?’

  What? What in hell...?

  Suddenly she’d tugged off her straw bonnet and tossed it to the floor again. He closed the door. That hat would be lucky to survive the day, thought Adam rather dazedly. Then she was sidling across the room to him and lifting her sweet face with its tempting rosebud mouth to his and—

  Hell. She’d raised her arms to run her fingertips along his broad shoulders.

  ‘Mrs Marchmain,’ he began.

  His voice was thick in his throat as her small hands tugged him closer. That delicate scent tickled his nose again—lavender soap, he guessed. He could feel the warmth now, of her tender body; her nearness was turning his blood to fire and making his pulse throb. He reached out his big hands to take hers and hold them away.